Sexy Miners Never Die

Only the good die young. The bad are immortal. It is proven once again by the resurfacing of one of the most egregious greenwashing ads ever made. As peak oil has people pushing the "clean coal" agenda again, and after the recent TVA dirty coal disaster, the German blog scene is abuzz over GE's ecomagination campaign, launched in 2005. What are they saying, and what has GE really done with ecomagination?The blog Einfach Nachhaltig (Simply Sustainable) picked the sex sells rant from Der Klima-Luegendetektor (The Climate Lie-Detector), which looks beyond the great hopes the world is placing in President Obama's Climate Policies to review just how desperately the big players will defend the market for coal. The Lie Detector points readers who can manage English back to the original skewering of GE's ad by Slate. Too bad they did not share a few choice translations for those who do not read english. For example, a full understanding the perverse absurdity of the ad is difficult without an awareness of the connotations of the folk song "Sixteen Tons".

Since it has been four years since GE pulled the sexy miners ad amid protest, naturally one wonders what has been accomplished by ecomagination. GE certainly demonstrated that old habits die hard in the battle of the incandescent bulb. The current GE Ad Buzz suggests that GE's smart grid scarecrow superbowl ad is a valiant effort to accomplish the difficult task of hyping smarter energy transmission technology.